


a gold band

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 07, disgusting wedding related fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 18:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17565875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Mulder has a proposal for Scully.(Dialogue prompt: "It looks good on you.")





	a gold band

It’s a chilly morning in October when he says it. They’re lying in her bed, the curtains thrown back and sunlight streaming in through the windows when he says it, her head on his shoulder and most of the comforter bunched up around her. He says it slow, his voice deep and barely teasing, so she knows he means it. He says, “Wanna get married today?”

She lifts her head to look at him, her eyes wide with surprise and maybe an ounce of caution. She says, “You’re kidding.”

“Dead serious, Scully.” He strokes the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair, cupping the shape of her skull. He smiles a little, the sides of his eyes crinkling, his thumb nudging the side of her cheek. “If you want to,” he adds carefully.

She shifts next to him, her stomach pressing awkwardly against his side, their faces bent together but not too close. Her palm slipping over his chest. “Mulder, we’ve been hiding our relationship because we don’t want our partnership to be terminated. I guarantee you the FBI will terminate it if a marriage shows up on their court documents.”

His smile thins, but only a little. “They’re putting our section up for budgetary review, Scully,” he says gently. “They’ve closed us down once. They’ll do it again.”

“Oh, Mulder, how many times have they shut us down and changed their mind? We’ve kept at this for seven years and it still hasn’t ended.” She lowers her head back to his shoulder, still sleepy in the way she can only be on a Saturday morning, curled up in bed with her partner. “And marriage,” she adds muffedly into his neck, “marriage won’t help the cause.”

“I dunno that there’s a cause to help.” He scratches her spine gently in a way that makes her hum pleasantly in the back of her throat. “What I’m saying is,” he says quietly, mouth bent down towards her ear, “we don’t have to not do this because of the Files.”

The blinks in surprise, several times. That was one thing that she never, ever expected to hear. She lifts her head to look at him again in astonishment. He’s still looking at her, his face dead serious, his eyes dark and soff. “Mulder… you’re not saying you want to do this because you think the Files might be closed…” she says cautiously.

“No, no, of course not,” he says quickly. “I… It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I think, and I just… it seemed like the right time. But not because of the Files.”

She shakes her head, almost in disbelief. “Then why’d you bring it up?” she asks softly.

“You brought it up, Scully,” he says, really teasing now, and she bites back a grin. He pushes hair behind her ears, leans up to kiss her temple. “I knew that our jobs would be your first argument, and I wanted to let you know that it might not be a problem,” he amends.

She’d thought he was joking. She’d really thought he was joking because this is exactly the kind of joke he would make. She lets her head drop bonelessly to the pillow, overwhelmed. “Oh, Mulder,” she whispers again, her eyes half-shut, her palm still pressed over his chest. She can feel his heart under her fingers.

She’d thought he was joking, but maybe she should’ve known. By the way he smiled that night on the couch, at her words: I’m fairly happy. By the way he’s been looking at her lately, like she is everything that matters in the world. By every little moment they’ve had in the past year, and every moment that preceded it. There’d come a moment where she had more or less dismissed the idea of marriage—it hadn’t seemed sensible, after a few years. But now… now it doesn’t seem so crazy. It doesn’t seem crazy at all.

He rubs his nose against her scalp, one hand touching the side of her head, his warm, callused palm. He whispers, “It’s okay if it’s not something you’re interested in right now, Scully. Or ever. I just… being the last man left on Earth puts some things into perspective, you know?” He kisses her hair, in the spot just behind her ear. “I wanted you to know I was willing,” he murmurs. “But… I don’t want you to feel obliga—”

The rest of his words are swallowed as she rises up on the mattress, seizes his face in her hands and kisses him. “Okay,” she mumbles into his mouth.

He draws back from her, hand on her jaw, looking a little dazed as if he’s been hit by a truck. Like he didn’t really expect her to say yes. “Okay?” he repeats, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” she says, and she can feel a grin breaking out over her face. A part of her is tempted to analyze this further, to question whether or not it’s a good idea, but she finds she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to question it. She kisses him again, briefer this time. “Virginia has no waiting period, you know,” she adds, and the look on his face is enough to wash away every ounce of doubt in her body.

—

They’re at the courthouse within two hours. It feels like a rush, like time moving too fast. They both dress in more of a hurry than they do for work—ironically, Mulder thinks, when there isn’t any sort of deadline. He doesn’t have any idea how to dress, so he dresses as if it were a work day, knotting a horrible tie around his neck that he remembers Scully complimenting a while ago. He’s shrugging on a coat when Scully enters, in a sweater and jeans, her hair straight and tucked behind her ears, the light dusting of freckles across her nose. She blushes a little when she sees him. “I feel a little underdressed,” she says, spreading her palms a bit self-deprecatingly. “Especially considering the occasion.”

He shakes his head immediately. He feels a grin coming on again; he’s going to be smiling like an idiot the rest of the day. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “It looks good on you. It looks excellent on you.”

Her face turns a little redder, her head bent down, the corners of her mouth upturned. She lifts her hands with the car keys, jangling, and murmurs, “Should we get going?”

“Yeah,” he says. He leans down to kiss her cheek as he passes her.

The drive feels too brief and too long all at the same time. He finds himself restlessly tapping his fingers on the wheel. Scully watches things flit past the window, her head tipped absently against the glass. She bursts out laughing as they drive through a suburban neighborhood, passing a house decked out in Halloween decorations. “What’s wrong?” Mulder asks, suddenly worried that she’s going to snap to her senses and tell him to turn around and go home.

“We should’ve waited a few days, Mulder,” she says, giggly. “For Halloween.” When he shoots her a blank look, she clarifies, “Mr. and Mrs. Spooky? We’re playing right into people’s expectations of us.”

He shakes his head ruefully, chuckling. “I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction,” he says. “We’re doing this for us, not for them.”

She smiles, reaches out and rubs her thumb over his knuckles. They ride the rest of the way to the courthouse in silence.

The line for the marriage license is about as long as one can expect in a legal building. They stand restlessly and wait, Mulder leaning close and making up idle stories about the people around them to make her giggle. He thinks about reaching down and grabbing her hand, and then he realizes that there is nothing stopping him. This is their wedding day. It sounds so strange, but it feels right. It feels like, silly as it sounds, that this is where they were supposed to end up.

He reaches down, brushing his fingers over the soft underside of her wrist before intertwining their fingers. She looks up at them in instinctive surprise—they usually try to avoid showing affection in public out of habit—but it fades immediately. She squeezes his hand and leans absently into his side.

After they’ve signed the license, black ink smeared on their hands, they linger a bit. Mulder can’t stop staring at the looping letters of their names. He rocks back on his heels and looks up at Scully, who is still staring at the piece of paper. “Do you want to call your mom?” he asks.

She swallows and looks up, shaking her head. “I’ll call her later,” she says. “But this… this is just for us.”

He wraps an arm around her shoulder and squeezes her close, tucking his nose into her hair. Her hand presses against his ribs, her fingers spreading as if playing a xylophone. “You ready?” he murmurs, cupping her elbow in his palm, and she nods.

—

The wedding ceremony is low-key. It’s so overwhelming that Mulder doesn’t even register most of it. He says what he is supposed to say, but he isn’t listening. He is mostly looking at Scully. Watching the tip of her chin, the way her hair falls across her forehead, the deep blue of her eyes. He loves her more than he can put into words. They don’t hold hands, but they’re standing close enough that their thumbs are touching.

When the judge pronounces them husband and wife, a lump builds up in Mulder’s throat as if he’s going to cry. He links thumbs with Scully and finds that her hands are trembling. They stand, as if spellbound, until the judge directs them to leave. She doesn’t kiss him in the room, but as soon as they’ve exited the courthouse, she turns towards him, facing him. Her hand wraps around his tie; she tugs him down to kiss him. He pulls her flush against him, hugging her tight. “Thanks for marrying me,” he says, and she chuckles low in her throat. He hugs her close on the steps, ignoring the people passing them. “I love you,” he says.

She’s quiet for a long moment—a moment so long, it might make him nervous if she hadn’t just married him. But then she looks up at him, her hand on the back of his neck, her eyes full of tears. “I love you,” she says.

His tie slips through her fingers. They stand closer together as an icy wind blows past. Mulder shivers, immediately thinking, I should give her my coat. And then he stops. He stops to correct himself: his wife. He should give his wife his coat.

—

He does give his wife his coat, slipping it over her shoulders, and she tries to talk him into taking it back all the way to the car, and he just keeps refusing until she rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. She climbs into the driver’s seat of the car and he climbs into the passenger seat, and he buckles his seatbelt, expecting her to drive off, but she doesn’t. She shifts awkwardly in her seat, clearing her throat and lifting her chin nervously. “I have something for you,” she says, her voice quivering, just a little. Almost indecipherably. “I-I probably should’ve given it to you in there, but…” She breaks off mid-sentence, dipping her head again and reaching into the pocket of her jeans.

She’s so serious it almost scares Mulder, and he is about to make some crack about the coat he gave her just to lighten the mood, when she brings her hand back up and the words get caught in her throat. Sitting in the palm of her hand is a gold wedding band, simple and too large for her fingers. It looks old, like it’s some sort of heirloom. He doesn’t know what to say.

She clears her throat awkwardly, the ring cradled in her palm like a precious thing. “This… this was my father’s,” she says, her voice wavering between steady and unsteady. “He left it to me in his will. They wanted me to have it… and I dug it out of my closet this morning, before we left.” She gulps. “And I-I know it’s not very traditional, but I want you to have it.” She looks up, and her eyes are teary again. “If you want it,” she adds gingerly.

He’s shellshocked. He can barely speak. “Scully…” he bites out, astounded and honored and on the verge of tears himself. “Are you sure? I… I don’t know that I…”

“Yes, you do,” she says stubbornly, as if reading his mind. “I want to give it to you. And you do deserve it, Mulder. You do. You’re my husband now.” Her voice cracks on the word husband, as if she can’t believe it either.

He can barely breathe, his chest is too tight. He really is going to cry. “Scully,” he whispers shakily, and leans forward to hug her, but the seatbelt tightens, locking him in place. “Shit,” he mutters, and they both chuckle wetly. Scully thumbs tears from her own eyes and moves in to wrap her arms around his shoulders. It’s an awkward hug, the seatbelt cutting into both of their necks, but neither of them notices.

She holds him tightly for a minute before leaning back and grabbing his hand in hers, sliding the ring over his fourth finger. It bumps over his knuckles before settling into place. She holds his hand in both of hers and smiles wobbily at him. His wife. “It looks good on you,” she says.


End file.
